Hello, new readers. No, this isn’t High Times dot com, but don’t worry there’s Doritos at the end of this post. Hey, don’t skip ahead. You have to read the post first. Yes, the computer is talking to you. Aw, I’m just messing with you. The computer’s not talking to you. You’re just reading, silly! So, Bud Norris didn’t come out of nowhere to be my new Razzpick du jour. Yesterday, he went six innings, giving up one run and K’d 4. In the not-too-decent past, I mentioned liking his upside. For our friends in Latin America, the caveat is his wildness. The love comes from the fact he has more Ks than innings. There’s only ten other starters with more than 110 innings in the major leagues that can claim that. That’s one starter for every finger. Unless Antonio Alfonseca is reading this. The wildness is still there, but he hasn’t walked more than 3 batters in a game since April. I’d absolutely grab Norris for the last month if I needed Ks (who doesn’t?) and some upside (of course you do). Anyway, here’s what else I saw yesterday in fantasy baseball:

Chris Johnson – 4-for-6, 1 RBI in a 16th inning game that saw Roy Oswalt play left field and Tim Kurkjian’s voice cracking at the sheer craziness of the game. Can you believe this game, fellas?!

Ryan Howard – 0-for-7 with 5 Ks before he was ejected. That’s the golden early shower sombrero.

Ian Kinsler – Received good news that he’s about week away from trying to re-injure himself again in the major leagues. Here’s to that next injury, Kinsler!

Bobby Jenks – When Putz came out injured (zipper problem?), Jenks came in and sealed the deal with a perfect save. With Thornton headed to the DL, Jenks is your closer.

Hong-Chih Kuo – And Broxton is not your closer. Or at least he wasn’t last night. Broxton was the closer on Saturday then his next time out he looked like how Torre treats Kemp. I imagine Kuo will get another save or two until Broxton can get his shizz together.

Matt Kemp – Notched a slam & legs as the Dodgers somehow made due without Pods’ grit and wily veteranship. Perhaps Ronnie Belliard’s determinedness and Manny’s insouciance made up for it.

Chad Billinsgley – Will have his next start pushed back to Saturday because of a tweaked calf. Hopefully he doesn’t go ice skating on his time off.

Jorge de la Rosa – 7 IP, 2 ER, 7 baserunners, 7 Ks. You might feel like you need bulbs the size of onions to start some of these guys, but dlR hasn’t given up more than 3 runs in over a month.

Eric Young Jr. – 3-for-4 with his 9th steal. He’s leading off every game and stealing. You really shouldn’t need more.

Javier Vazquez – Moving to the bullpen for a little while while (stutterer!) Ivan Nova takes over his starting spot. Vazquez should’ve been dropped months ago; now you have no excuse. I went over Nova yesterday, you can get to it from here with a little ingenuity. The gist: Always drink your Novaltine!

Tyler Colvin – 2-for-3 with a homer as he hit in the eight hole. Big change from when Lou was batting him leadoff. The eight hole for NL hitters is death.

Matt Holliday – 1-for-4 with his 22nd homer. He’s doing what you hoped Markakis would do and Josh Hamilton’s doing what you hoped Holliday would do. Maybe finally next year people won’t expect the Holliday of Coors to still show up.

Evan Meek – Recorded the save with 1 IP, 1 ER and 4 baserunners, bringing his August ERA to 8.59. His name is looking more and more like an aptronym. Hanrahanananan hasn’t been much better, so the Pirates may just play matchups, using both relievers. Yes, a shituation that already yielded next to no saves just got worse.

Ryan Raburn – 2-for-4 with his 8th homer. I’ve already mentioned on a few occasions that I like Raburn. Raburn’s the horse, and it’s been beat.

Jhonny Peralta – Now 5 for his last 7. So far Silent H has been deadly for your fantasy teams, so I’d try and maintain my jhoy.

Will Rhymes – 2-for-4, getting comical how much he’s been getting on base (.476 over the last week) and still doesn’t have a steal. You got the rhyming, now bring on the stealing!

Hideki Matsui – 3-for-5 and hitting near-.400 in the last week. Still only has 2 homers this month, but if the million other hitters I’d own before Matsui are taken, here ya go.

Mike Napoli – Sat out again as the Angels placed him on waivers. It’s pretty normal for teams to place guys on waivers, but the irony is (if it is irony… no one has any idea what irony is), if the Angels were to see a team place a 20 homer 1st baseman on waivers and they didn’t know who he was, they would want him. Seriously, Napoli, apologize for sleeping with Scioscia’s wife. You were drunk, it’s all good. Bros before, well, you know.

Will Venable – 2-for-3 with a slam & legs. Was his 6th steal in his last ten games. Yes, he really is this fast.

Gaby Sanchez – 2-for-3 and 3 homers in his last five games and now has 15 home runs on the year. Looks like someone didn’t like that I compared him to Lyle Overbay. Well, Lyle Overbay has 16 homers. Cust kayin’.

Coco Crisp – 3-for-5, with a homer and a steal. Last night was a huge night for slams & legses.

Angel Pagan – 4-for-5, 3 Runs and his 31st steal. Do you realize Angel Pagan is a top ten fantasy outfielder according to ESPN’s Player Rater? Sure, steals are overvalued on that thing, but that’s still kinda crazy.

R.A. Dickey – 7 IP, 5 ER, 10 baserunners, 8 Ks. Starts like this happen because of the unpredictable nature of the knuckleball. On a sidenote, this game saw Dickey going against Johnson. Sounds less like a baseball game and more like a sword fight.

Freaking Jerry Manuel cost me a QS and blew up my sexy ERA running his Dickey out there in the 8th. Is it just me or does he never know when to pull his starters? Seems like that asshole is always pushing them towards a CG and they always get blown up in the 7/8/9 inning

Uh, yeah steals are overvalued on the ESPN player rater. Ichiro is considered a better player than Adrian Gonzalez, Mark Teixeira, Ryan Zimmerman, and Brandon Phillips.

Ichiro has 5 hr, 34 rbi, and 56 runs. On the plus side he is batting .311 with 31 steals. Is there anybody that would rather have Ichiro on their squad? I mean he isn’t even batting his usual .350 and scoring tons of runs. That rater is fucked.

@Daniel: yet .290-15 isn’t really that far off from his numbers last year. he can hit for avg, but with his lack of speed, he’s not a .330 hitter, he’s around a .300 guy. he has a little pop, but 25 HRs is probably about his max.

the problem was people were expecting him to be a .330-30-100 guy this year. those of us that knew better let other chumps draft him.

@Mike: i’ve gone back and forth. while haren has been up-and-down to say the least, the rays also have the propensity to get no-hit and shutout a fair amount of time. on the flip side they also can blow the doors off a SP in a hurry.

I’m sitting here imagining how hilarious it would be if there was a law firm called ‘Johnson, Dickey and Putz’.

Speaking as an owner of Ichiro Suzuki (and in fairness to me, he came at a pretty decent discount), I can name at least 20 outfielders off the top of my head who would be of more help to my team right now. Oddly (if not ironically), it’s Ichiro’s runs scored or lack thereof that’s caused the most damage to my place in the standings. I took into account his lack of pop when I drafted him, but the lack of runs scored was difficult to predict. He’s on pace to score only 73 runs in 671 at bats, notwithstanding the fact that he’s projected to have 209 hits and has put himself in scoring position 31 times by virtue of steals alone. Sure, the Mariners’ offense has defied the laws of physics by both sucking and blowing at the same time, but Ichiro scored 88 runs last season in a Mariners offense that was arguably no better than this year’s. Is this the lowest total of runs ever scored by a player who had more than a) 600 at bats; b) 200 hits; and 3) 30 steals in a single season?

Matt Kemp was my first round draft pick in a league with weekly roster moves, and I’m at the point now where I can’t even decide from one week to the next whether I should put him in my line up over Coco Crisp. Thankfully I put them both in my line up this week, although it was at the expense of a couple of solid outings from Andres Torres.

Isn’t this getting just a little bit ridiculous? Kemp was an early favorite for NL MVP. In fact, he was leading the NL in home runs, RBIs and runs scored on April 28 when Ned Colletti called him out in the media for being a slacker. Kemp hasn’t been the same player since. Is this some kind of tough love experiment that’s been orchestrated by Colletti and Joe Torre? If the Dodgers think it’s a good idea to platoon Kemp when they’re 12 games out of first place and fighting for a wild card spot, then not only is it time for Torre to retire, it’s time for Ned Colletti to go back to the used car dealership where shitty hair cuts and bad moustaches (as opposed to that of our brave and fearless leader, Grey) are still en vogue (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:NED_COLLETTI.jpg).

Whew… I’ve been wanting to get that off my chest for a while. Anyway, today’s round up was an awesome display of awesomeness. Grey, you raised the bar with this one.

Is JarJar worth starting today? He’s been worse during the day, worse on the road, and it’s in Coors…but he’s been good since coming off the DL. Kinda hate to sit him, but looks like I might have to.
Also,
Any worth in streaming Jake Westbrook @PIT? He’s been better since the trade (Duncan, I assume), but he sucks hard. Probably gets a win, but he might give up 6 or 7.

So…. in 2nd, making a run for the regular season win. Looking my team up and down and the only sore thumb is goddamn Mark Reynolds. He is absolutely killing me and sucking the life out of my avg every week.

Is he droppable at this point?

Also, I’m in a deep keeper and I can keep him in the 13thish round next year. So if I drop him, someone is gonna grab and keep him. While I kill myself if he starts to blow up?

@Grey: “Sure, steals are overvalued on that thing”… in my 4×4 league it appears the title will be settled by this category. Two points separate the top three teams and those three are all in the top four (I’m fourth) in the SB category with eight steals the delta from top to bottom… no point here– just a random tweet.

I used to be a big fan of the ESPN Player Rater (and I still think it does a pretty good job). Steals are the rarest fantasy stat, so a .300-0-90-90-30 guy should be worth more than a .300-30-90-90-0 guy.

However, someone pointed something out to me that I overlooked – steals may be the rarest fantasy stat, but when you look at the standings at the end of the year, there are usually huge gaps in steals while everyone is clustered very tightly in HR and RBI. A few weeks ago we had 5 teams separated by fewer than 10 RBI. On any given day people could gain or lose 4 points in RBI – that’s a huge swing in August.

Right now, there are 5-10 steals separating each team in the standings – so a steal may be the rarest stat, but a 5 HR day will help you more in the standings than a 5 steal day due to the fact that everyone is clustered tighter in HR. Juan Pierre is having a tremendous year, but I now need to swap him out for a boring HR/RBI guy because there are no points for me to gain/lose in steals – I have 10 fewer steals than the guy ahead of me and 10 more steals than the guy behind me.

@GopherDay: Zimmermann has much better control and weaker opponents. Plus he has less name recognition, so he could be cheaper in the draft. That being said, I can see Zimmermann being hyped up by the quant guys ala Nolasco, Baker, Shields and him costing a lot – like Matusz did this year.

@Neil: problem is that a 0 HR, 30 SB guys rarely drives in more than 50 runs or so. and he doesn’t drive himself in with HRs so his runs hurt. and his avg is gonna be directly correspondent to BABIP and Ks without any boost for HRs.

i mean i get the SB appeal, but most of the guys are 1 cat contributors, maybe maintain status quo in avg and R depts. the ones that give you .300+ avg are overrated (ichiro, ellsbury, crawford – though he does give you double digit HRs) compared to a guy that can hit .280 and give you the same SBs.

personally i prefer to load up on .300-30-100 types that all can/will toss in 10 or so SBs. usually that’s good enough for me in SBs, and you can always grab a rajai davis or eyj off the wire if you wanna make a late SB push.

Wow, that’s a great research database at baseball-reference.com. I knew it was a good site, but I had no idea how easy they made it to do customized stat research.

Anyway, I ran the following query:
for single seasons, from 1901 to 2010, (requiring PA>=600, SB>=30, H>=200, R<=74 and Qualified for league batting title), sorted by greatest Seasons matching criteria.

There were no hits until I raised R=600, SB>=30, H>=200 in a single season, he’s on pace to have 9 runs fewer than the previous low.

Sup Grey. Which two of these four pitchers will lead me to the promise land in September: Bud Light Norris, Whore-Hey! of the pink, Jordan Swimmer-man, or C.J. Willy? So basically, pick two. If they do indeed lead me to a fantasy world series win, there’s a daiquiri in it for you. PS, I don’t need K’s or ERA or W’s or any specific stat. Just need the best 2 pitchers the rest of the way. Thanks dudeface.

Somehow the only thing I took away from Howards blurb was that he had a golden shower.

Could someone combine Mark Reynolds and Jason Bay into one person. I really would like to drop Reynolds but considering I am 2 in AVG I would really not like to see him hit 11HR in Sept somewhere else.

I just need SB would you drop Figgins for Young. I keep Figgins since I have so much OF UTIL and 2B is nice place for SB. That’s probably a yes I just can’t seem to drop Figgins.

Gray:Sorry, my last post was a bit screwy; I was in a rush. The lowest run total for those search parameters was 82. I don’t know who it was, or when they did it, because I don’t have a subscription to that service.

What I do know is that I didn’t get any hits within those parameters until I raised the runs scored criteria to 82. I worked my way up from 73 runs scored until I finally got a hit at 82.

Gray: Sorry, some technical difficulties on my blackberry. The previous low in runs scored for a player with 600 at bats, 200+ hits and 30+ steals was 82. I can’t tell you who it was, or when, because a subscription was required to access the list that the search generated.

Again, Ichiro is on pace for 73 runs scored, 9 fewer than the previous low for those parameters.

I for one am glad I grabbed Holliday where I could. Obviously I’d be very happy if I had grabbed Hamilton as well, but c’est la FBB.

Holliday is batting .301/ 22 HR/ 74 R/ 78 RBI/ 8 SB. So he projects to get 100 R and 100 RBI. That’s not his Coors numbers, and it’s also not first round numbers, but I’d say it’s fair for the second round.

Apropos of baseball, I find it interesting that for 2009 and 2010, there are 3 players, all pitchers, named Clayton. There have only been 2 other players named Clayton (first name, that is, I’m not counting Royce), in MLB history, one in 2000, and one in 1947. Naming is generally cyclical, so I would think there would have been a bunch of Claytons in like 1898.

Which brings us to the following: from 1889-1898, Bug Holliday played for the Reds. Which is relevant because how rad of a name is Bug Holliday?!!! Bug had an insane 1894. In only 121 games he hit .370, scored 119 runs, drive home 119, stole 29 bases, and hit 13 HR. And I drafted him in the 8th round of my 12 team roto! So old…

fuck mike scioscia. i could have the #1 C in 3 different leagues if he’d just play the best hitter on his team. shit, it doesn’t even have to be at C, play him at 1B or DH. you can’t convince me he shouldn’t be getting everyday ABs with all 3 lineup spots available to him.

To all Pedrioa’s owners- no reason to worry anymore, BOS is putting together a support group for him!:

(via Yahoo!): 2B Dustin Pedroia hasn’t been doing much with his sore left foot over the last few days, and the Sox were planning a Wednesday conference call with team doctors and Carolina Panthers team doctor Robert Anderson — who is also consulting with the Sox on C Jason Varitek’s broken foot. Sox manager Terry Francona also arranged for Pedroia to have a phone conversation with Chicago Bulls legend Michael Jordan, who suffered the exact same broken navicular bone injury in 1985 during his second season with the Bulls. Francona managed Jordan during his time playing in the minor leagues for the Chicago White Sox organization, when the NBA legend infamously left basketball to give baseball a shot.

All of this seems so silly to me. “You broke your foot? You should probably talk to Jordan–he broke his foot once too. I’m sure he’ll have some great advice for you.”

I could be wrong here, but considering how much great stuff has happened in Jordan’s life, I have a feeling that he won’t remember too many details about a foot injury that occurred 25 years ago. My guess is that this is all a ploy to keep Pedroia busy so he doesn’t try to take grounders from his knees again.

@royce!: Ha! What a wacky story. Jordan is probably an expert of quite a few things, how to deal with a foot injury has to be pretty low on his list. Jordan’s probably more interested in hearing how to hit a baseball.

From the thank-****-I don’t-work-there department, it’s Rubik’s Cube day on the floor where I work. Every ‘pod’ of desks has to be festooned (like that one?) in a different colour (from the cube) and you need to dress appropriately.

@grey: please rank in terms of most value from this point on (in this case, value is referring to pretty much mostly sbs from here on, a few homers wont hurt, avg and run production numbers mean absolutely nothing)….brantley, venable, austin jackson, fowler?

@Grey: for sure…I got blasted twice with Homer and Wood but this week’s opponent is getting blasted too so it kinda works out

interesting…the heat certainly factors into the hitting so since I work at a power plant that only operates when needed based on regional and state load requirements (usually dependent on heat waves and A/C usage), I should have known that since we are running that the balls would be flying this week…so really what I am getting at in the most obtuse way I can think of is that maybe we should be adding weather reports or energy load demands into our fantasy scouting reports for pitchers

@herschel: @Grey: I just read an article that said: “Morgan said he had an “ongoing dialogue,” according to the Washington Post, with one particular fan in the center field stands that escalated with Morgan throwing a ball into the stands, striking a different fan in the head.”

Anyone hear if Zimmermann is going to be allowed to pitch more than 5 innings? They kept him at 5ip during his minors starts. If that’s true, it kind of throws his QS potential out the window rendering him useless to me.

@Steve: SHADDAP! Kuo-owner Steve knows he is just as miffed at that ninth inning. After Clippard puked all over my ERA tonight I don’t think I could have handled headcase Broxton.
Good night from the East Coast!

2 completely unrelated questions for 2 different Greys:
1. This one is for January Grey. You gonna target Lind next year since he’ll probably be available pretty deep into drafts?
2. And this one’s for September H2H Grey. I have Reyes and Infante as my SS options in my H2H league that scores the 5 standard categories + OBP. Reyes hit a combined .223 (.296OBP) in September between ’07 and ’08, and I can’t be havin that nonsense come playoff time. This league also has no trade deadline (not your typical league). Knowing that, if you were me, would you see if you could get something for Reyes and feel good about Infante holding down the SS spot? I’m weak on Saves and am actually considering giving Reyes straight up for a top one. Have I lost my mind?

I’m 30 innings over the limit in one league right now but I’ve got Gallardo vs LAD, Romero vs Det, and Wandwagon @ Philly. Who if any or all would you start? Thanks! Oh and its nice to know your giving out marriage advice now too. RazzMatrimony!